Posts Tagged ‘sensory table’

Thanks to Gemma Conyard who sent us this lovely picture of her son with a red trimmed Trabasack Curve Connect. “My son with his Trabasack curve connect, I made him textured activity discs to keep him occupied while out and about :-)” She has put discs of material with different textures and colours so he can explore them. The sensory discs are a brilliant idea, being lightweight and easy to put inside the trabasack, they are great for children travelling in their buggies. I love the way she has put a little clacking frog in the middle so that it makes a click when he presses it!

Thank you Gemma Conyard who sent in this great pic "My son with his Trabasack curve connect, I made him textured activity discs to keep him occupied while out and about :-)"

Trabasack Connect is very good for attaching toys and materials as it has a soft fabric covering that sticks to ‘hook’ or rough velcro tape. I expect each of the sensory discs has a small piece of ‘hook’ tape so that it can be repositioned around the trabasack tray top.

Trabasack was created by a mum designing something that helped her child play so we love it when we see people creating toys to use with it.

You can use it to attach all sorts of homemade sensory toys. Here is a sensory toy that we made for our son last year. It doesn’t include a picture of our Joe as he had quite gruesome chicken pox at the time!

Trabasack with homemade sensory toys

As you can see, we used some plastic bottles, some masking tape (orange and neon!), plastic flowers, tin foil and some wind chimes.

There are lots of things around the house that can be used as sensory play toys. You can experiment with anything with textures, bright colours or that make interesting noises, as long as it is safe for your child. If you enjoy crafts, doing it can be a lot of fun.

Other ideas for the discs shown could be sticking different types of pasta to them, or cotton reels on string, shells, other textured materials like leather or suede, patterned or woven cloth, or even old plastic bags and canvas. Exporing them can help your child’s fine motor skills and development.

Our son Joe is now 7! He got lots of new sensory toys for his birthday including a ‘Lollipop Jungle’ from TFH Special Needs Toys.

It has always been hard to find Joe toys that he can enjoy. Joe has Dravet Syndrome and although he had an ordinary development as a baby, suddenly severe epilepsy began at about 9 months old. He lost lots of skills, and is now trying to re- learn and develop new skills in feeling and grasping objects.

Joe started to have have a portage teacher at around 2 years old and we were thrilled to see that she was able to start simple exercises with him to help him explore his surroundings again. One of the things that his portage teacher discovered was that Joe liked rough and prickly textures but didn’t like smooth toys anymore! We found that rough textures like ‘hook’ velcro tape, or ridged surfaces seemed to help him connect with things and he would hold his hands against them and explore them for much longer. With smooth untextured surfaces Joe would quickly pull his hands away.

Joe does like smooth surfaces now but he also still likes to explore prickly and textured surfaces. We are always looking for new sensory play toys for him to explore on his trabasack. We were pleased to find a great new toy for him called a Lollipop Jungle

Joe with Lollipop Jungle sensory toy on a Trabasack

The Lollipop Jungle is a yellow hardwood tray base with plastic ‘lollipops’ that you can attach things to. The tray base can itself be attached to a Trabasack using velcro tape or hook tape. This allows it to be within reach of your child and the soft bean bag cushion under the Trabasack means it can rest comfortably there.

The plastic straw lollipops are various colours that add to the sensory appeal of the toy. You can use them to add other items such as cotton reels, toys, sponges, or anything that your child might like to explore.

The Lollipop Jungle can be attached to the Trabasack play tray

Joe really enjoyed moving his fingers between the straws and finding new objects to play with. The straws have have plastic beads on top of them so that they are safe. Each bead has a safety stopper to prevent it coming off. This gives it the appearance of a lollipop!

We found that we could also add farmyard animals inbetween the straws and even some hair rollers on the straws to give it a rough rotating surface.

The toy came flat packed but was very easy to assemble, and once the stalks are in place and the lollipops slotted into the board they are very difficult to remove, an important safety feature.

It comes with variety of small ‘trinkets’ to use but like us, I expect many parents with a child with special needs will have many of their own!

The toy is tough and robust and will cope with vigorous play. Any child brushing thier hands through the stalks will be rewarded by finding new objects. This will encourage expansive brushing movements and improve curious exploratory play and fine motor skills using the fingers to grasp the smaller objects.

Lollipop Jungle

The Lollipop Jungle has been a great sensory toy for Joe. It is available from TFH Sensory Toys. A Trabasack Curve Connect makes a very useful mount for it, a further benefit is that it can attach to any buggy with straps, meaning that the lollipop jungle can be played with in a variety of locations, not just at home.